Google Completes a Major To-Do with Tasks API

The ecosystem of “To Do” applications is about to get bigger. Google Tasks, which allows you to manage tasks with Gmail, Calendar and even via mobile web client has just released the Google Tasks API, which could open the door for another set of to-do applications that would be positioned well for people who like to do all their work with various Google services.

Earlier this year, the Google Tasks team had provided asummary of top requests that users had made. Almost 17,000 developers and 185,000 votes were given in that survey, which led finally to the Tasks team going all meta about their task by completing one of the major tasks--to provide an API. The Google Tasks API was announced at Google I/O and throws open the doors for developers to create applications that link directly into Google Tasks.

The new API provides a RESTful interface to manage all operations like task lists and tasks. The data format is JSON and supports various authentication mechanisms including OAuth2. To get started with tasks, read Google's getting started guide. Once you understand the Task Collection and Task models, you need to deal with five basic operations that help you manage them:l ist, insert, update, delete and get. You can invoke tasks directly via the REST API or use various client libraries depending on your language of choice.

An example of the REST API to retrieve the task lists for a user is as follows:

Google Tasks is one of 20 task management systems with APIs in our directory. The Google Tasks API opens up a huge opportunity simply because of large number of users that use Google services today and also the fact that it would enable seamless sync across various devices.

About the author:Romin Irani
Romin loves learning about new technologies and teaching it to others. Follow me on Google+